


Hotheaded

by IrreWilderer



Series: “L’habit ne fait pas le moine” [2]
Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Dirty Talk, Enemy-Lovers to Friends, F/M, Nipple Play, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Shower Sex, Smut, slight dom Max, slight religious discourse, smut is in the second chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-22 19:34:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21307442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrreWilderer/pseuds/IrreWilderer
Summary: The Groundbreaker's busted radiator array has temperatures (and tempers) rising. Good thing there's a place where hotheaded crew-mates can cool down: the Rest-N-Go's communal showers.
Relationships: The Captain/Vicar Maximillian DeSoto
Series: “L’habit ne fait pas le moine” [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1540777
Comments: 21
Kudos: 212





	1. Chapter 1

Roosting cross-legged on the bed of a Rest-N-Go room, Archie’s lap was covered by a ratty hand towel. Onto that towel, liberated synthetic tobacco was sprung from cigarettes unceremoniously unraveled by her determined fingers as she entered into phase one of ‘find a decent law-damned cigarette’.

Spacer’s Corona? Acrid as a tire-fire. Stogie Slims? The only flavor she could manage to find was the cheese sort. Cosmic Smoke? Up her alley, but left her a tad too spacey before a brawl. A combination of each and either, however, might smooth out edges, ameliorate tastes, and meld everything into a cohesion of pleasure and proficiency not seen this side of Halcyon since the settlers first landed.

Or, else, Archie would be revisiting breakfast. But breakfast that day had been good. And she needed a decent cigarette.

“I don’t believe that to be the intended use of that particular product,” observed Vicar Max as he sauntered in alongside the door’s hydraulics hissing. “Any tampering with, or modification of, original property design leading to death, dismemberment, or downtime will not be covered by the company’s insurance, you know.”

As per his typical comportment, Max held his hands at his back and the rest of his body with careful authority: spine stiff; shoulders squared. His ramble ‘round the Groundbreaker had him out of armor and down to his usual duds, whose clean lines and cleaner state painted the picture of moral spotlessness.

Focused on her efforts, Archie smiled sly. “Sounds like you heard that one a few too many times, vicar. Which means you were found tampering, or elsewise putting your stamp on something. Wonder what it was you were amending. Some punk’s skull in a prison yard? Or, maybe, the rules that say priests are supposed to play nice.”

“I _ always _play nice, Captain Quaice. And rules”—Max tilted his head thoughtfully—“are not meant to be mended.”

Lifting the leaf-laden towel daintily by the corners, Archie set it to the side. “Right. Just nudged.” Brushing her pants free of debris, the woman winked. “I hear that.”

Standing and stretching; planting her feet and arching her back: as she worked out bone-creaks and neck-rigor, Archie silently speculated on the new surge of heat staggering through the room. The vicar waltzing in, tall with his subtle bluster, was an option for attribution. Orderly, neat; a smidge too up on that shelf: the collected man was like his collected books. But beyond the silken cover one couldn’t help covet, there was a fury bringing fire with it. It was as though it was caught in the folds of his vestments’ fabric: the flames walked with him. Max was quick to temper; brisk to bring down those deemed deserving, either with caustic wit or buckshot shell, and neither seemed to lose him sleep. Max could have walked in, and brought with him all the seering temper of his spirit.

The other possibility for Archie’s new under-arm sweat wasn’t nearly so euphemistic: Vicar Max had come from outside, and outside is where the heat lived.

“Where’s Parvati?” asked the captain. Groaning, she reached around awkwardly, kneading at the small of her back. “Can’t imagine her jaunting about the place too happily if she’s at her lonesome.”

“Miss Holcomb has returned to the Unreliable. To message Captain Tennyson, I believe.” Max went for his haversack stuffed with personal effects, which was lying on a cot. “I must admit, I’m... pleased to see you finding time to play match-maker for our bashful wrench-jockey. Miss Holcomb’s social life was never what one would consider ‘full’, and perhaps this will encourage her out of her shell.”

Archie’s boots clinked-clinked closer over the metal floor, hand still wrapped around her back and man-handling her sore-spot. “Put that away.” Her free hand pointed to the water bottle Max had extracted from his bag. “I procured some Zero Gee Brew for the lot of us. It’s in the icebox. And I ** _did _ **pick up on that acrimony, mister vicar. You know we can’t just waltz into the Groundbreaker’s cop shop.” Accepting the offered beer bottle Max had brought from the fridge, Archie twisted the cork top. “Look. We endear ourselves to the folk around here—Junlei in particular—and maybe we get a peek at their departures manifest. But sneaking in is not an option.”

“Were we to fulfill the bounty on Mr. MacRedd,” Max suggested confidently, “I’m sure Commandant Sanita might see her way into allowing us a stroll through security.”

Long-necked bottle of ZG Brew pressed to his lips, the man relished a long haul. His Adams apple danced as he swallowed. Archie watched, noting perspiration there, and shining on his cheek.

“I’d like to keep the body-count low,” she explained quietly.

A billowing draft like a seething breath swelled through the room for a second time. Shaking his head, Max stole another sip of beer, after which he recorked. “And this is where your Philosophist views lead you astray. This belief in chaos; in anarchy. In allowing transgressors the freedom to do as they wish. MacRedd spits in the face of all that is sacred and sensible.” Max hesitated. “Before throwing it _ on _a spit, as I understand.”

From the light sarcasm keeping things civil, to the words said, expressions worn, and ethics refuted: it was always a debate between the two of them.

Archie caught on quick to the vicar’s appreciating of the (admittedly) emotionally-charged chin-wagging whenever they ended up in the same vicinity. Archie could dig it: the blood-boiling banter; the exhausting back-and-forth; the opportunity to fine-tune one’s arguments in the face of, as Max would term it, ‘uncivilized ignorance’. But it seemed both were still weighing just how much crap they could take from each other. It was obvious in the way Max insisted on routinely sizing her up: in looking her over, head to toe, his calculating eye always ending its shakedown at her blaspheming lips, a smug smirk on his own.

Today, though, it seemed that for Archie—always the one to shrug or laugh it off—_always _ the one to turn the other cheek before sucking on a nonchalant cigarette… Well, for Archie, it seemed, her bullshit-meter had met quota.

Finding her way to the section of room deemed Captain’s Territory, with its lines drawn by scattered armor parts and packaging, the woman snatched up a box of Focusitol, popped three pills, then washed them down with a hoppy, saccharine swill of Zero Gee.

“And we’re going to blame Philosophism for that? For my not wanting to deal some dumb longrider a dirt nap?” Archie turned back to him. “Are you saying—? But, then, of course you’re saying that. You’re saying there’s a moral imperative to putting MacRedd down on the basis that he shucks Board politics.”

“He has ended innocent lives, Captain,” Max stressed with bemused disbelief. “Are _ you _saying he deserves less than the same?”

“Ah! But no! Those are **not**, in fact, the same!” Surprised by this obvious snag in his so-loved logic, Archie grinned. “He’s killed people, **_or _**he shucks the Board! These particulars aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“But he _ has _done both!” Max answered incredulously. 

“But that’s not why he needs to die,” Archie clarified.

“Of course it is!”

The captain’s hands, dancing illustratively as she’d made her comments, were thrown up in polite exacerbation. “And here I thought we might, miraculously, come to terms.” Stepping closer, she stared him in the eye. “Don’t fret, Maximillian. We’ll source what you need.” She sighed, shoulders drooping. “Just not like that.”

Feeling chilled—the ebbing vigor of discourse leaving her goose-pimpled—Archie put her beer down, and took to checking a mottled bottle of Level Head from her tonics cache, perusing the fine print for warnings associated with the mixing of suppressants with alcohol and uppers.

Here was a thing Archie Quaice appreciated about this side of the universe: narcotics in abundance. On Earth, access to pharmaceuticals was strictly controlled by one’s working contract, much like here. However, the alternatives, complications, and exceptions were far more difficult to navigate back yonder. Prescriptions had to be triple stamped and filled at place of employment, while the government offered healthy kickbacks to dispensaries uninclined to bribe-taking. As part of the problem—as a retired, sometimes pill-peddler herself—Archie knew just how hard it had been to get something as innocuous as caffinoids into the hands of the jobless. But here, on the Groundbreaker, a veritable hoodlum had the ability to stuff pockets with inhalants, powders, and medicinals from the generous, well-stocked vending machines. It was an absolute wonder.

A full belly was easier to come by on Earth, of course, but at least here you could take something to forget about it.

Remembering those days of barely outwitting the various corporations’ distribution control squads, Archie took a defiant sip of her milky Level Head. The brain-bubbles of her beer foamed away. The lights weren’t so bright, as the Focusitol calmed quiet.

“I didn’t think ship captains could be pacifists,” Max remarked, his tone tilting apologetically. “Didn’t think it part of the job description. What is your plan, then?”

Archie dug into a bag of cystipig rinds, and popped in one sloppy, greasy mouthful of heaven. She offered victuals, and Max declined.

“Help Junlei with the radiator array,” she explained around chewing. “We’ll go to the Back Bays, but not guns-slinging. We wrangle the parts, see what else, like as not, needs being done, and she’ll start warming to us. Hopefully while the rest of this place cools down.”

“Ah. Then is it your position that the Groundbreaker function entirely apart from the Board. As this is Captain Tennyson’s aim.”

It was an appreciable foible, the vicar’s taste for converse. But clarifying was one thing. Self-crucifixion was another.

“Max—”Archie’s brow slanted skeptically—“you don’t even seem to particularly _ believe _in the Board most times.”

Standing there, arms across his chest, the man’s brow shot up.

“The Board is a facet of the Great Equation; an implementation of the Grand Architect's plan, as well as a means of interpreting it. So I most _ certainly _believe in the Board. Support it, however?” A large, broad hand wiped down his facet. “It is the parts of the machine I distrust, Captain Quaice—not the instrument itself. The Board’s dealings in Halcyon have been far from foolproof, I’ll admit.”

Shrugging in agreement, greasy fingers stuck in her mouth for a cleaning, Archie accidentally observed, “like Edgewater? The sick? Those abandoned?”

For a third time, the rented room eddied with fresh, furious heat. Now, however, Archie had no need to commiserate on its origins. 

Head lowered, glare upon her; a thin-lipped sneer serrated the vicar’s wide, sculpted face.

“The sick?” Max repeated angrily. “Those abandoned? Are you referring to the people _you _left sick and abandoned? I thought we agreed not to speak of this, Captain; of your blatant efforts to undermine Mr. Tobson’s work. I may not always have approved of his qualities, but the man fulfilled his function as outpost administrator with more competency than Adelaide McDevitt will as leader of a band of layabouts.”

When at his full height in indignation, Maximillian DeSoto terrified. From softer-spoken and cutting a swell, to a man with no qualms towards storming one’s personal space, fists balled and elbows crooked for a fight. The change took but a second.

Archie didn’t scare easy, however. She was a pacifist out of respect for life, not for fear of tussling. And though she’d seen what the vicar could reduce ruffians to, something like bloody glee about his mien in the process, Archie wasn’t spooked. Even as Max stepped up to her; even as he used his looming stature, impressive shoulders, and menacing expression to make a point about how badly he judged her fuck-up, Archie didn’t flinch.

“Vicar,” she said pointedly, using his profession as a reminder towards forgiveness.

“Sometimes I forget why I need you,” Max spat, scowling down at her. “And things, for a moment, become so much clearer.”

“Once we suss a translator for your book, you’ll be as free as you’re allowed,” Archie answered with a lazy, optimistic grin to his half-threat. “So chin up, DeSoto. You’ll get to retire from this life of heathenry yet.”

Max sighed. “Yes.” His tone had the effect of weighing pros with cons. “And how many more sins will I be made accomplice to before then, I wonder.”

Edgewater had been but months from falling into the skids. And its vicar had held something secret and personal against the town that Archie didn’t understand. Still, he saw her as a villain; a perpetrator of Philosophist ideals; a danger to the hard-working and dedicated. And Archie, a purveyor of free will, was glad to let him.

“I,” announced the woman while laying a hand on his chest in defiant conciliation, “am going to go take advantage of a shower voucher. It’s why we rented the room, after all. Here’s to hoping we can get those pipes on the Unreliable fixed, eh?” Patting Max’s chest, moving passed him, she picked up a towel and tucked it under her arm. “We’ll go for the Back Bays after Parvati’s returned. Get some food in you, Max. There’s lots in the ice-box.”

Sucking on a Cosmic Smoke (rolling those hodgepodge cigarettes was still an absolute priority), Archie allowed the vapors to cloud her cognitive processes in the Rest-And-Go’s water-damaged communal shower.

Board policy had taught the populace that bathroom privacy was an indulgence; an unpatriotic waste of time and material resources. Archie didn’t mind so much. One thing she’d apparently left on Earth was a preference for being alone. It had to do with her fish-out-of-water circumstances: if she could read the reactions of others, she’d realize the proper reply. And sometimes, even in the shower, Archie found herself requiring a reciprocational guide in this new, weird world.

The room was warm, like everywhere else. A different sort of warm, though; a wet warmth. The place smelled of mold, though only dirt was visible. The walls were slick with mystery substance; the floor was stickier than it ought be. Once the water started, however, it was really the only thing that mattered, and the water started with a tremor and a scream.

_ “Fuck,” _ Archie moaned. Face towards the old, squeaky faucet and pipes, she allowed the cool water to deluge upon her freckled face and oily hair, her lower back pain returning as she tensed ever slightly against the cold, shocking temperatures. She didn’t care. The ache was worth it.

Archie ran her hands through her hair. She collected it; parted it in two; hung it over her shoulders in long streams of mousy brown and watched the water trickle through it. She rubbed a shoulder; she rubbed the other. Scrubbing her face with her nails, Archie felt so much mire and stain rinse from her. If she’d any worries—any fears associated with her impending business in the Back Bays—then, for the moment, they were soothed.

And just when it seemed things couldn’t get better, they did.

The door had admitted a visitor. As they shed their clothing, Archie, continuing to face the water, readied her affable one-liner about the heat (“how about this weather?”), after which she’d ask after their health (“so, how are ya?”).

The stranger padded closer. Archie was about to turn and flash a genial smile; however, her company quickly sidled up to her, pressing flush into her from behind, their hands resting on her hips and face burying in her hair, lips losing a sigh of satisfaction that echoed her earlier one.

“This becoming a habit, vicar?” Archie wondered.

The rumble in his throat was like the purr of a cat: content and salacious; a vocal translation of wordless, sensuous pleasure. Archie could feel Max’s relief kneading through her hair as he hummed—as well as a little lower, where a half-hard member pressed at her lower back. 

“This water is _ wonderful _,” Max approved. Archie’s short frame hardly proved a buffer, and the man was soaked thorough. He kept running a hand over his eyes to get the water from them while sighing, a smile soft but obvious on his up-turned face.

“Tell me about it.” Archie watched the lithe man over her shoulder, enjoying the view of his contentment. “Was starting to regret spending the bits, but this is more than worth it. Surprised not everyone on the Groundbreaker is stuffed in here, seeking some succor.”

A twitch of his fingers heralded Max’s palms sliding forward, resting on Archie’s stomach. Sharing a shower voucher became something else, then; something conciliatory; something kind, yet expecting. But that was their affiliation all over, weren’t it? Sour words, sorries, and eventual understanding.

“I apologize for before.”

“Don’t,” Archie answered shruggingly. Closing her eyes, she focused on his touch; on the warmth of his skin which wasn’t unpleasant, even for all the day’s suffered heat. “Ain’t aiming to change you, Max. Just want us civil as long as you’re on my ship.”

“That is my aim, as well,” he promised in her ear.

Of course, where he was _ actually _aiming was another place entirely. 

Archie cleared her throat.

“So, you, uh, well and cooled, now? Looking to get back to the room?”

“Not by a long shot,” Max answered.

Nothing about this man’s actions were meek. Not in rage, nor in passion, though one might say that latter encompassed his whole. 

Where Max towered in anger, he soared in fervor. He put his need to accomplish, have, and know to interesting purpose; it allowed him to make a quick study of those he was with, and thus get them where he wanted. And where that happened to be was where Archie wanted to be—_ached _ to be—and she was waiting.

“Not by a long shot.” This time, as Max repeated it, it came out a beautiful warning; a delicious threat.

Archie gasped, and bit her lip.


	2. Chapter 2

Towering at her back and consuming her with his presence, Max’s wide hands slid along Archie’s skin. Cupping her breasts, his fingertips flexed slow and measured, kneading just enough to elicit soft, dreamy sighs, after which, with an almost hesitance, it seemed the vicar read her reaction.

And _ what _a reaction. Caught, and catching; hard, and harried: Archie’s breaths were stuck shuddering in cobwebs in her throat. Her head lolled back; rested weakly on the man’s shoulder. As rushing water kept her eyes closed, the rest of her was in a dark world of sensation where constellations came to life across her body under Max’s intent focus.

That focus soon shifted. With the side of his thumb, Max stroked her nipple. Brushing the nub to a tender stiffness caused Archie to gasp, grin, and half-squeal, delighted.

“You appear particularly sensitive already,” the man observed of her smitten sounds.

Archie smirked. Squirming shamelessly, she luxuriated in the tickle of his slight chest hair on her back, and his cock grazing her ass cheek. “Maybe,” she surmised, “I’d been hoping I wouldn’t remain by my lonesome long. Maybe I was already itching for company by the time you gallivanted by.”

“Ah.”

That sound: thick, and thought-filled. He seemed to consider the comment, and conclusions were drawn on Archie’s skin as Max took the woman’s other nipple between forefinger and thumb, clamped down, and twisted. Crying, she jerked against his chest, the hazy pleasure she’d been swimming in suddenly exploding across her vision. And, in reply, Max twisted harder. As the nub began to burn, he let it free and flicked. A pulsing, expansive soreness in her breast swirled through to Archie’s thighs as her mouth gaped soundlessly.

“What you’re saying,” clarified the vicar, “is that any Groundbreaker delinquent would have sufficed.”

Securing her at the waist, he spun her around, bringing her to face the expanse of the public shower—displaying her, as it were.

“Any slow-witted simpleton may have waltzed in,” growled Max, “and you’d’ve been happy to have them cram their fingers in your cunt.”

To put a point on his seedy hypothetical, he did just that: Max buried a hand between her legs. Thick, fraught fingers sought her clit; they set to a wild, patternless chaos, rough, and fitful.

Choking on a swallowed howl, Archie’s head flung back, cracking his jaw. But Max kept ground, his middle finger joining the fray. He lashed at the throbbing, slicked bud of the bucking woman given over to full-body quivering, whose last bit of dwindling strength was going towards barely keeping her upright while her legs shook helplessly.

“Law…”

Archie’s delirious moans strangled on her tongue. Her ass pressed into him, as reflex had her worming away from the insistent rubbing causing her to lose control. His hand on her clit; his cock grinding between her ass cheeks, touching and spoiling all those sensitive nerves: it felt good; it felt terrible; it felt too much, and she was completely dazed; lust-addled. “Fuck… Max… _ fuck _… please, fuck...”

But he kept on, circling in vicious strokes and prodding at her from behind, coaxing those maddening peaks of pleasure which had a brutal orgasm in sight.

“Fuck, eh?” Max’s breath was in her ear. Water was running down his nose. Seconds from allowing her to cum, his thighs-cradled hand stilled, sending her into fits of torment. “Is that what you want? My cock in your—” Testingly, the man’s middle finger, previously so intent on her swollen pearl, slid through her lips for the first time. “My, captain,” he muttered approvingly. “Completely sodden.”

Archie groaned. “Vicar, if you don’t get to it quick, I’mma’ have to.”

Portended by an abrasive squeal, the water stopped. The voucher’s time was up.

Turning her around, the vicar bent, hefted her by the thighs, and pressed her against the wall. Archie clung to him, face in the crook of his neck. She was washed by the warmth there; in the scent of clean skin. As she felt his member slide inside, butting against something deep, Archie, however, clenched, her lungs holding a smothered gasp.

His thrusts were jerking; short. The vicar’s panting came laden with gruff sighs signalling mounting pleasure; his grip on her legs was an enthralled vise, fingers bruising her skin. But with her clit neglected, back slapping against hard tile, and some amount of unease in being air-borne, Archie, jostled by his raw pumping into her, could only persevere patiently, her state of bliss diminishing.

“I—wait, Max…”

Craning his neck, the vicar locked confusion-coloured hazel eyes on her. Archie tried to be constructive.

“I, um—ah…”

Realizing their satisfaction wasn’t quite communal, Max adjusted his speed, thrusting slower; fuller; snapping his hips less, and allowing gravity to cradle her carefully on his cock. It only burned worse. Flinching, Archie tried to force her legs from his grip so she could stand.

“It’s not…It’s, uh...”

Frustrated by this turn of events—by the deadened sexual drive which she quite frankly missed—Archie glanced at him, fearing worse than disappointment. But need had reddened Max’s face, even unto his hairline. Water stuck his short lashes together; harsh lighting accentuated crows feet and faint wrinkles, and he looked enticing in a way unprecedented. It was at his eyes: a glowing softness; liquid penitence. Although vocal tussles weren’t out of their ordinary, he would never hurt her physically. And yet, here, he feared he had. By that far-away stare—by his lips pressed tight—he appeared to fear his—what?—penchant for rougher pleasure had harmed her? Upset her? And how that made his expression shine a full shade of apprehension; of vulnerability. 

“I just…” Archie wanted to assure him. “Not like this.”

“Alright,” he nodded.

With Archie remaining in his arms, Max slid to his knees, wincing at some minor pain of the process. Feet on the ground—or, at least, her knees inches from it—the woman had returned to a space of comfort. She felt wrapped-up in him, perched on his lap with ankles folded at his back, and following a few moments of traded stares in which some unspoken understanding had been met, they began grinding against each other, their slicked foreheads touching and mouths sharing sighs.

_ Laws_, was it good: her left hand padding her clit while she bounced, his long cock swallowed up. Max let her set the pace; she rocked quickly, and abrupt, arousal rushing back upon her like electric current lapping through her limbs. The static collected; thrilled in her belly, growing until she was crying into Max’s shoulder, desperate to cum.

“Max, please… _ damnit._”

“Yes,” he replied rawly, begging in turn. “I want to feel you.”

Squealing, squeezing around him, Archie settled a hand on his scalp and scrabbled at his hair as she burst within, the cresting, complete power of her orgasm causing her to go rigid and stiff. Her cunt pulsing around the vicar’s cock—burying her deeper in dark, black rapture—had Max soon spilling into her, hollering once, his head thrown back and teeth bared.

Weightless—without body and without thought—they shivered against each other, panting.

One minute later, Archie was rigged-up in her threads and beating feet back to their room. Max chose to wait a few, eluding minutes to follow, should any wandering eye wonder at their colluded-upon exit from the showers.

“I expected Miss Holcomb’s presence, by now.”

Glancing over her shoulder, Archie pulled down the hem of the fresh shirt shucked from her pack, completing her clean ensemble. “Me, too,” she said. “Might be that I go take a swivel of the ship. See that she’s okay.” Having somehow, in the last three minutes, sucked down four Spacer’s Coronas, Archie stuck another cigarette between her lips. “Need anything while I’m on board?”

“No. Thank you.”

Filling her pockets with some happened-upon loot she might try to truck on the way, Archie readied for the promenade. The vicar was waiting at her back patiently, however, and it felt like his shadow was getting longer; tall enough to touch her.

“It was good, Max.” A might feeble, but she meant it. Archie lit her smoke.

“For a moment, I… I feared that I’d—”

Archie turned, facing him. _ “Hurt me?” _ exuded alongside billowing smoke.

“Frightened you,” he clarified.

Arms folded at her chest, the captain roamed closer. “Nope. Takes more than some rough riding to chatter my teeth.”

Delicately; studyingly: his squinting gaze treated her like those old tomes in his room. 

“I can be… kinder,” Max suggested. “Less aggressive.”

She smirked. “I don’t know… Can you? Seems we only get to copulating after a scrap.”

The vicar’s brow rose—either at being confronted with (or caught by) the truth, or because of a kind of acceptance he was cottoning to. Either way, his expression smoothed to a smirk: the quiet, insightful one she loved to see gracing his gosh-darned majestic face.

“Meant it before, Max,” Archie insisted, taking another drag. “I don’t mean to change you. And I don’t mind your hotheadedness when we’re bickering. Or in bed, matter of fact. So long as I can count on your rifle, and a smidge of respect, well, that’s all I ask.” 

She went for the door before things effervesced to warm-and-fuzzy. Not that she shied from affection; she wasn’t averse to all the softness of sweethearts courting, or the grace of honesty spoken from a place of feeling. But that weren’t them, the captain and the vicar. She was a means to an end for him, with which she was fine. Archie wished to help him, plain and simple. And if helping herself to his handsome, willing form from time-to-time was part ‘n parcel of that plan, it was all the recompense she required.

“Back in a jiff,” she said from the door frame, about to step out.

_ “Archimedes.” _

Wincing, Archie stopped her paces. “Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

Of a mind that she deserved unsolicited gratitude more often, this still had her head-scratching. “What for?” She turned to him now.

“For accepting me,” Max answered. “I cannot say I’ve done the same for you.”

Inhaling a lungful of tangy tar, Archie shrugged. “You don’t call me by that damned name, and we call it even.”

Chuckling, Max smiled. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Captain Quaice.”


End file.
